Is Google A Monopoly Or Do People Just Prefer It?

The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece from Nextag CEO Jeffrey Katz, calling Google a monopoly and slamming the company’s business practices. This is nothing new, of course. We see these types of complaints all the time, and various government bodies continue to give the company a hard look.

The European Commission has even given Google a July 2 deadline to come up with changes to its search results. A Google spokesperson told WebProNews, “We continue to work cooperatively with the European Commission.”

Google, apparently recognizing the huge audience Katz’ piece was likely to find, decided to address the article in a blog post, and dispute six of the claims he made. Google SVP, Engineering, Amit Singhal took on the argument.

“Let me be very clear: our unpaid, natural search results are never influenced by payment,” Singhal writes. “Our algorithms rank results based only on what the most relevant answers are for users — which might be a direct answer or a competitor’s website. Our ads and commercial experiences are clearly labeled and distinct from the unpaid results, and we recently announced new improvements to labeling of shopping results. This is in contrast to most comparison shopping sites, which receive payment from merchants but often don’t clearly label search results as being influenced by payment.”

“As we’ve said many times before, we built search to help users, not websites,” he writes. “We don’t make changes to our algorithms to hurt competitors. We make more than 500 changes a year (each one scientifically evaluated) in order to deliver the most useful results for our users – and we now publish a monthly list of algorithm improvements. Every one of those changes moves some websites up and some sites down in the rankings, but the most important thing is that users are happy with the results.”

“Our algorithms are always designed to give users the most relevant results — and sometimes the best result isn’t a website, but a map, a weather forecast, a fact, a quick answer, or specialized image, shopping, flight, or movie results. And that’s not just Google; Bing, Yahoo and other search engines do the same thing,” he continues.

“All major search engines — including Bing and Yahoo — long ago evolved beyond the simple ‘ten blue links,’ and we believe that our users are often best served by providing better answers directly in search results,” he adds. “And if users don’t like our results, they can try Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, or even Google Minus Google.”

In the WSJ piece, Katz wrote, “Google should grant all companies equal access to advertising opportunities regardless of whether they are considered a competitor.”

Interestingly enough, I saw a Microsoft ad while searching through my Gmail earlier today. I saw one again in the middle of writing this article, while viewing an email about Google.

Look what I get when I search “search engine” in Google:

Singhal addressed this part of Katz’ argument as well: “We don’t prohibit competitors from advertising on Google — in fact, many of our largest advertisers are also competitors. Our auction-based advertising system, which takes into account relevance and bids, is designed to provide a level playing field on which placement is not automatically awarded to the highest bidder.”

The bottom line is: nobody is forcing users to use Google. Some people use Yahoo as their search engine of choice. Some use Bing. Some use Baidu. Some use Yandex. Some use Blekko. Some use DuckDuckGo. Some use Ask. Some use something else entirely. It just so happens to that the vast majority of people prefer Google, and that’s despite years of no television advertising.

There is not a device or browser that I know of that forces you to search using Google. If Google could force users to use Google products, Google would probably be getting better user numbers on Google+. In fact, we probably wouldn’t even have a Google+ because Google Buzz would have been so successful, we’d all be using that as our primary means of social networking.

Google has major competitors in almost every facet of its business. Microsoft. Apple. Facebook. Those are a few that come immediately to mind, though there are certainly plenty of others.

A major flaw of Katz’ argument is that he compares Bing to all of Google. Katz says, “Its closest competitor, Bing, is so far behind in both market share and revenue that Google has become, effectively, a monopoly.”

If you want to compare just the search engines, that’s one thing, but if your’e going to say, “Google has spent years trying to monopolize every avenue through which a company can reach users online—whether it is through search, advertising, email, mobile devices or browsers,” then you have to compare Google to Microsoft as a whole, which makes a great deal more sense.

Besides things like Windows and Internet Explorer, Microsoft happens to have a little thing called Xbox, in a massive space (gaming/entertainment) that Google can barely even dream of having Microsoft’s market share in. And just this week, in fact, Microsoft finally announced that its Internet Explorer browser (which tends to come with Bing as the default search) will be coming to Xbox. Bing could have been competing at a much higher level if Microsoft would have done this in the first place. Then there’s the fact that Bing provides the web search results on Facebook, the world’s massive 900 million user-strong social network.

At least one Googler has been talking about Microsoft’s approach to search. Look at this recent conversation thread from Twitter:

There is nothing forcing people to use Google other than preference, habit, or brand recognition. Google spent a lot of time building all of that up to where it’s at today. Google has been one of the greatest success stories of our our time. Should it be punished for that? Should Google be penalized by government regulation for operating its own site the way it wants to, just because the majority of people happen to find it a superior product than its competitors?

Won’t forcing Google to change the results that are preferred by the majority of Internet users hurt users? Tell us what you think.

Personally, I choose to use Google because I like the quality of their search results and there has been a massive improvement over the past year (and for tech stuff I often search for, forums and blogs with relevant information have taken the place of so-called big sites that were just spam-filled or ad-filled). I also use other Google services by choice too, such as their free email (I switched from Yahoo many years ago through my own free will, no one made me). And sometimes I even use Bing’s maps instead of Google’s, through my own free choice (for some countries, Bing’s aerial view is much better). I’ve never felt forced to use Google’s services, but chose to use the ones I like.

If Google’s going to be punished for showing maps, weather, etc, in search results then so should every other search engine that does it and has their own. But really, that’s just ludicrous. If Google is going to be punished for being popular, that’s also ridiculous. Can’t punish because people choose. (Otherwise, shouldn’t popstars, sports stars/teams, etc, be punished for being too popular/winning all the time too?)

Service Pro

“Our algorithms are always designed to give users the most relevant results”

No Amit, the most profitable–for Google–results. Even “organic” results favor your advertisers. Of course users see 1-3 pages of ads, Google news, products etc before seeing those organic results. How many people can tell ads from results?

Chris, what Matt Cutts says about Bing bar doesn’t matter, it’s irrelevant, he’s a paid shill. Google has bought traffic from IOS, Firefox, opera, AOL and many other portals. By the way, no one forced people to use Windows either.

Dave McCoy

Google simply puts out the least cluttered and most relevant searches where Yahoo and Bing fill the first couple pages with either redundant beta, fill with unrelated or simply do not find as many options as Google, at least on searches I do!

Peter

Google has become a monopolistic giant, which behaves as if it owns the internet. I am fed up pandering to every whim Google has when it dances! Anyone for a Bing?

Cj

LOL – nice one troll. The people behind Bing sure spend a lot of money trolling forums! I see these 2 liners everywhere!

bob

just before google was very different, him allow the competition (not like now), stay away from misleading ads links in their search results.

Just read reports from ex-google workers why them go away from such ‘not evil company’. bing for such reports and you will see.

now it clear advertising company. amazon+wikipedia+youtube+other google services at top everywhere. It not competition, that sites have free but not worthy content. video takes lot a human times, but it not mean what videos must be everywhere, just make a video search results (like already at yourtube), but not in main search!

I noticed a signifigant decrease in traffic, and there are thousands, if not millions, of others having the same problem with the new Google changes. When I used Google for my own use the other day, I noticed websites with very old and outdated content on top of the search results, but they had many backlinks (also outdated), from years of on the Internet. This means consumers will leave Google and go to the other search engines. Of course webmasters will start optimizing their websites for the other search engine.
And, right on time the other search engine came out with many new webmaster tools.
What happend to the days when Updated and Original content was king in Google search results instead of paid backlinks?

Steve Kinney

“There is not a device or browser that I know of that forces you to search using Google.” Well, actually there is. We call it the Internet.

A few months ago some engineers at Google manually added non-existent domains and web pages to the Google database and index system. Later, they searched for these pages with Bing – and found them. This tells us that Bing is a scraper, reprocessing Google search results.

Last week I went to Yahoo! to enter a new website into their database. The page I have always used for this was “not found”, so I did a search and came up with the current page: It required a Microsoft user account login to proceed. So it appears that Microsoft owns Yahoo! search.

Google, Yahoo!, Bing: Three faces of one search engine. This makes life easier for web developers who are trying to capture a few extra points of market share – take care of Google and you are done. But it is also rather disturbing: Any “regulator” or “partner” who can remove a site from Google’s database and index system, can in effect remove it from the Internet.

That said, Google is a completely broken search engine, IF you want to search the Internet on the basis of content alone. Google monitors and records every search, ties each to a unique user ID, and builds a profile based on this and data gathered on the same user via Analytics and ad impressions. Users are fed search results consistent with their known search, click through, and web surfing habits. This “improves” the user experience by blacking out information that does not comply with the user’s established beliefs, knowledge base, and behavior – which increases the likelihood of click-through on Google’s ad links, both in search results and on the websites visited.

The “end user” is Google’s product, not their customer. Google’s only customer is the online advertiser and their only standard of “quality” is whether or not a feature or function increases their advertising revenue. And now, it appears that Google has become the Internet’s only significant search engine. Strange days indeed.

For “real” search results, use duckduckgo.com or startpage.com, scrapers that present Google search results without permitting Google to identify users and feed them heavily biased results.

http://wealthslimitless.com walt

I didn’t like duckduckgo.com either, great search results and all but it appears that it’s like google happening all over again and may even be google. See before google started there was a small company named goto.com their main thing was something similiar to adwords. Mysteriously this company disappeared and then Bam a few years later here comes Google. When are the people going to wakeup get off their butts and start programming again, instead of writing apps to work with google, wordpress, facebook and whatever seems popular that day.

http://wealthslimitless.com walt

Well, doing business on the web over the past year or so I will say not only is Google a monopoly, but they are a Monster to say the least. A monopoly swallows up it’s competition, they thrive for awhile until they began to do what Google is doing now, biting off the hands that fed them. And finally finally at the tail end the Law steps in to set them straight. We live in a world where people want choices and not to be held at the mercy of some midget azz**** with dreams that would ruin the world. None of it makes sense to me sites are penalized for pulling content from other sites? Doesn’t Google pull content from other sites? For it’s news, For it’s images? I could go on and on about this. And oh yea sure people made choices in the beginning. In the beginning people chose hitler and other figures. In fact, thinking about it I don’t see the difference between Google and these people and countries we have frowned upon in history. If a company looked in on your hard drive and shares data with Google is that ok? If Google tracks everything you do across the web including your analytics, emails etc is that ok? I guess not until it affects your life. Sure people chose to use Google. People chose hitler to and the sad part is those same people suffered behind making the wrong choices.

Mike Bee

The problem with Google is they went from scouring the web and simply showing the results of what was out there, to now they dictate what you need to do in order to get ranked higher! That is quite a major paradigm shift, they are not purely showing what is out there – they are showing results skewed towards sites that COMPLY to Google’s ideals! That is a huge difference from say, year 2001 Google.

Also, when Mr. Singhal says the results are never based on payment, he is not telling the whole truth – perhaps companies are not paying DIRECTLY TO BE RANKED HIGH IN THE “NATURAL” results, sure. But when Google places a priority on companies that have been around longer and have done more online business than say, well, YOUR COMPANY – Google themselves will make more money in the long run.

For example, go into Google adwords – companies and individuals that have been doing it longer and already have a lot of sales get priority over newer members for the same keywords. Google says this is because they have earned trust, but what it really says is “these guys are making us a ton of money, so we are not going to bump down a PROVEN COMMODITY for the risk of some UNPROVEN NEW COMMODITY.” So in other words, they are protecting their own asses, and yes, ensuring they make more money.

You need to look at the entire picture, and see what the Google employee’s are not telling you – perhaps Mr. Singhal is not smart enough to understand this, which I doubt. What he is doing is called “spinning”. Too many of these online SEO and marketing blogs breath the Google gas, and believe everything Matt Cutts or whomever at Google states as the truth.

http://ianicsolutions.com Hernan

Simple and short. I Use google because they have the best service. I can change when ever I want.
That is no monopoly.
Question is those searching for regulation are they objective or influenced?

mike

Google is not a monopoly. But in relative terms its just the ‘first’. It arrived at the exact nexus of desire and opportunity; the essential ingredient to the success of any product. There other products but they all fail the ‘desire vs opportunity’ equation that Google seized first.

http://evrn.net/ Howard Crane

For 3-4 days now I’ve been using DuckDuckGo search, and I still use Gmail and Youtube. I choose Gmail, I begrudgingly accept Youtube, and I find myself going back to Google’s search engine because it’s profiled me into a little bubble so I can type in syntax I wand to know more about like “<?php if", and not get the front page of the PHP tutorial, "Parents Helping Parents" and all that junk.

Yes it incredibly successful and cunning? Yes.
Is it a Monopoly? No.
Does it seem really unfair? Yes.

http://www.japnesetruckdismantling.net Danesh Mahram

Agree with peter : Google has become a monopolistic giant, which behaves as if it owns the internet.are not always designed to give users the most relevant results”

http://www.simp-search.com Sunny

How do you control a “Giant”?

http://www.barensexy.com Penny

I think the government should just back off and leave google alone honestly why is it any of their business anyway. There is a thing called a mind and people have them and free choice. Hello do they not think people can think for themselves.
It really bothers me that they are such bullies.

Laura

Google works well, and I have always been pleased with the quality of it – therefore, I would always choose to use it (unless something else worked better). Thus, I would hope that there is no action taken against Google that would interfere with its ability to continue giving such good quality service.

bob

i completely noy pleased with google search results now. Try to search something special – and you will see only top sites as wikipedia, but i not able to find what i looking for. Google now is advertising & wikipedia, youtube and amazon search engine. Them deindex websites so it not complete search engine now. bye, bye google!

Robert

NO why should they then you need to regulated all search sites then.

Newmedium

Google is the cyber equivalence of the old street thug who forces store owners to pay “protection”. If any of you seen a drop in search queries in the past month for no apparent reason, ask yourself how much did I pay Google lately…

http://www.NotJustWebsites.com Steve Nunnally

I believe that the media and government are not even aware of the worst abuses that Google is perpetuating because they don’t spend enough time actually using Google. The worst damage is being done in plain sight to small businesses.

If a new business wants to thrive (or fail) based on sales resulting from searches on the Internet… They have to reach the top spots in Google’s organic (Recommended) listings. Literally 20 to 50% of new businesses in the USA can succeed or fail based on how their websites rank in the search engines. Rankings = Customers = Sales. With Google influencing 65% of sales resulting from Internet searches the choices they make when they design their results display are affecting the survival or failure of hundreds of thousands of new businesses each year.

Evil Choices

The media and government do not seem to be aware of the following changes that Google made (unnannounced) to it’s software but we found and have proven by testing.

Google has compiled a list of all websites, phone numbers, physical addresses plus all listings on online directories and phone book company sites. It is now comparing and banning all of the following

All of the following now result in a “new” website being pushed to the bottom of the search results… Despite that the owner of the website has done nothing wrong.

Google will ban you if…

1) Your website uses a physical address that already appears on any other website… or appears on any phone book company site or online directory. Your website can now be banned if for instance you own more than one website, your spouse already has a website, you own more than one business at the same location, your business is in a strip mall (Units all at the same address with only unit numbers to seperate them) or you share an address with another business.

2) Your phone number appears as the primary phone number (on the contact page) of any other website. For instance if you own more than one business and they share a phone number. Or if your phone number (Perhaps you are a new business with a new phone number) was used by another business before you and they have not been removed from all the phone book and directories (Some of these have listings from 20 years ago).

The list goes on and on. The worst of these changes actually appeared within the last year. Because Google did not accounce them, big businesses (Older websites are exempt – We have proven this also) are not complaining, new small businesses are not even aware why they failed in Google, most SEO companies have not figured this out… reporters are unaware of them. Without the reporters and big business there is no one getting the governments attention.

Display Stuffing

Now to make it even worse for small businesses (and big businesses too) Google is intentionally taking up more and more of the searchers video display with things to push the best (Organic) results down the screen. Google does this because it knows that most searchers will not scroll down. Google also does this because “good search results” result in fewer clicks on it’s paid advertisements.

1) For instance Google used to only allow one website to displayed two times on the first page of it’s results. They changed it to four. The reality is that no one actually wants to see those third and fourth results. They are useless. Google does this simply to cram useless listings on the screen so that there is less competition for it’s pay per click.

2) Google has been phasing in over the last few months moving the real search engine results (Based on quality of information and user actions) to the bottom of the page by moving up Google Places pages (Many of these are useless websites, or even out of business)up. Why? Because Google knows that a smaller percentage of people will click on the Google Places listings than on the recommended listings. Basically, this reduces the competition for it’s paid listings. The result is more sales for Google Pay Per Click.

I do not believe in Government regulation. Instead I believe that honest reporters can solve the problem simply by doing stories about how much lower the quality of search results has become over the last year as a result of these changes. When people start to realize what Google has done some of them will switch to Google’s competition. If Google wants to keep market share (profits) it will be forced to choose between these practices and keeping the user happy. And USERS = MONEY.

I just wonder if the press is willing to listen and challenge Google (Goliath)

http://www.stevegillman.com Steve Gillman

Not Necessarily a monopoly, but this line from Google’s Amit Singhal is just plain false:

“Our algorithms rank results based only on what the most relevant answers are for users…”

A result does not magically become less relevant because someone (the site owner or a negative SEO campaign) point links which Google does not like to the site. As long as Google penalizes incoming links (as they are clearly doing now), relevancy is not the only criteria, and users will not get the most relevant results.

bob

based on his ideas how to make lot of money, this is more correctly to say.

Reasonably Paranoid

The amount of information G has on all of us and the amount of control it has to make of break any business, based on their ever-changing obscure rules,necessitates the need for more than just government intervention. Google needs to be reclassified as a Public Utility. As a search engine it is a poor reflection of what had once been. Search results,post Panda/Penguin are a joke. Legitimate businesses are suffering without cause, adequate explanation, or legal recourse. And as an advertising vehicle it is purely exploitative, taking advantage of the fact that there exists no adequate alternative. How many companies have a truly positive Adwords ROI, commensurate with risk? If the Web is to continue as a democracy, if the free market capitalism is to survive, no company can be permitted this much unchecked power.

John D

These days we are seeing a kind of desperation in google to force small business to advertise, why?

They are already making good money from advertisements of large corporations, then why this desperation to make small business advertise. Is the free money supply from banksters drying up?

Andre

From the webmasters point of view Google is a monopoly 100%, they say, “try to not depend on us”, but they rule an internet world and they have a very big influence on peoples lives, how can they say that?

They keep changing their algorithm, sites are getting penalized without any logic etc, so it’s more like a lottery – no stability at all. I think Google must be regulated. I believe they act only in their commercial interests, and in interests of their investors… they don’t care about the people, and especially they don’t care about small businesses.

PS: Sorry for my bad English.

John

I’m sick and tired of both Matt Cutts and Google.

http://cheapodeals.in Dharamvir Bhandari

I think world is communist as they wont let anyone company/org take charge of the world including Google.

Frank

Eh’ monopoly, Defindently a monopoly

http://www.blogtips.ca Enzo Testa

In my opinion what has happened is the fact that google has become so popular as a search engine company with its good marketing and advertising. People got used to the term just “google it” phrase and went with it. In the mean time google took advantage of it all and built themselves up so much people HAD NO CHOICE but to use google as their only effective search engine alternative.
Google has taken advantage of the public and built them selves up to become a HUGE monopoly and MUST be shut down immediately!

http://www.blogtips.ca Enzo Testa

You should read my article I wrote on “join google adsense and have your account banned, free of charge”
There’s a little game google loves to play. It’s called signup for adsense and have your account disabled, free of charge.
Whether you are new member or had an account for many years, it doesn’t matter, eventually your day will come and you will lose your account also. It gets even better, if you had money coming to you, consider that gone too.
Like millions of others, our adsense account was disabled today. The best part is, we don’t really care. why? We knew it was coming and we make money> from the other sponsors.
I know a few very well known internet marketers and bloggers who have been around since the beginning of adsense only to have their accounts disabled as well. It’s not surpising but rather humorous.
This is how google runs it business. It’s made up of too many monkeys making wrong decisions and by the click of a mouse can wipe you out in a flash. The company has grown far too big and throws its weight around like they are god. They are also prying into users privacy by learning how and what people search for on the internet, so be careful. The list goes on.
To me, google is just a fad that will eventually die out. Yes, they have been around for a few years but like any other company, the day will come when someone else new comes along and the’ll be out of business. We hope.
Whether you are a newbie or an established webmaster there are plenty of other alternatives to google adsense out there. I suggest you check them out. Good luck.

http://www.webtemplates.com.au/ Henry

Google is great but I find some serps messy with adwords, maps, news, youtube etc. Maybe a bit too much emphasis is on pushing their own products and services to the first page.

Live and let live.

Anand Prakash

I personally use google because I prefer to use it. The masses moved to google as their preferred search engine because they were fed up of bloated Yahoo and MSN pages filled up with hundreds of ads and other nonsense taking ages to open up on their screen in the era of slower internet connections. Google saw an opportunity and tailored itself to users’s requirements.

People who are Google bashing should look into their own lapels to see how their biased approach is going to benefit Microsoft, the ugliest monopoly the world has ever seen, who left no stone unturned to kill its competitors, mostly by means of negative publicity and talks of incompatibility against their competitors. Makes me qestion, how many of these google bashers are secretly on Microsoft’s payrolls to make people question Google’s near monopoly (the users made it so, so just shut up) in the search engine market.

walt

lol I think you need to know more about the history of microsoft as it was exactly the same as googles. ms came out with windows which no one caught on to the fact that it wasn’t truly multitasking. programmers began to write windows applications because windows had a framework making their jobs easier. does this began to sound familiar?

As, far as my view on google it comes from a business standpoint. I will type out the blow by blow. Google sends out its bots to basically catalog my sites daily sometimes hourly. I didn’t want the bots so I put in instructions for them not to show up, but that didn’t work. The bots continued to comb through my sites for months. Finally I was ready to test market a site so I allowed the bots in. Guess what? google didn’t catalog the site and stopped sending it’s bot lol. result – no listing at all. That is when I realized how google could put companies out of business.

It’s fine if you are a consumer I can surely see where it wouldn’t appear to be a monopoly, but from the side of doing business on the web it is definitely a monopoly. Right now I’m wondering what people will do when business owners finally pull out of google. Like people can complain about ms day and night but what if Microsoft decided not to have their software listings show up in google searches? would that be fair? would you consider that as ms forcing you to use their search engines?

http://osrecords.com jammybiskit

There’s a road sign that says “don’t complain about traffic, you are traffic”. Google became what it is because people use it. It is therefore an example of democracy in action.

There are things that probably ought to change to make dominating a market much harder – but that’s not Google’s fault. If you don’t like democracy then try something else.

http://www.gateway-african-safaris.com Christian

Another spin action by Google to cover the growing discontend from website owners and users. Just a friendly warning: Google will ban your IP if it is not happy with your comments. Done it to me.
When I ask why. The answer was “Only temporary..” Should be read: “Beware, we will not tolerate”

Dale Burkholder

Google is a detriment to society and the economy. Chum must be a chump for Google’s goons. Always “dancing” around the subject, refusing to represent and allowing Google’s “intellects” to deceive.
Just like amazon.com. Web service companies that turn around and become retailers working both ends of the world economy??? Conflict of interest has been created.http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/GUl6w0MNH-g/gQU7HD6L8R0J

hanif

so far my exprience with google have been great. I do not see anything wrong or unethicial in search results. Paid ads are clearly displayed in diffrent color/format such that one can eaisly know why they are on top

Google is doing fine the way they are doing.

i fail to understand why Google can be labeled as monopoly. Search sites have been around long time before google started operation. Google has earned its position due use friendlyness and har work. no one is stopping the other search site to beat it

Google is not forced upon anyone and users hav quite many choices

Thefore it would be justified to put any control or restriction on the operations of Google
Its just the jealousy issue

http://www.purocleanpers.us Kristine

No regulation needed! We don’t need government stepping in to regulate this industry and create a reason to tax it.

If the other search engines were that good, they would already have the market share Google enjoys.

While Google does have problems with customer service (e.g., advertisers can’t get a human being on the phone; it takes forever to have them accept changes on listings), and these problems with customer service will continue to fuel the fires of dissatisfaction, it is still a superior product to yahoo, bing, etc.

http://www.rwrinnovations.com Ron Nixon

I’ve been using Google since they started. They set the standard for search and provided a great place to work for their employees.

I don’t want our government or anyone else messing with Google, Bing, Yahoo or any of the search engines.

My concern, as a small online retailer of books, is that in almost all searches for a book by title, Amazon comes up #1, 2, 3, or 4, Even when the publisher of the books refuses to sell to them. (Amazon puts a statement on the page stating the book is out of stock, more to come soon and refers you to an affiliate.)

Their pages above the fold are mostly advertising and links to affiliates. A picture of the book and one or two setences copied from the publisher is all the copy they usually display.

Why do they get top billing when their content is so lacking and the rest of us have to put original content on our web pages?

http://www.iraq-obs.com/vb/ منتديات عراق وبس

Another spin action by Google to cover the growing discontend from website owners and users. Just a friendly warning: Google will ban your IP if it is not happy with your comments. Done it to me.
When I ask why. The answer was “Only temporary..” Should be read: “Beware, we will not tolerate”

http://abs-gallery.com Michele

double posting will get you those results you are complaining of – good luck with all the other engines my friend – if you cannot hold up to Google’s standards, you cannot hold up to anything elsewhere either.
But since you are seemingly a trickster [Christan or منتديات عراق وبس] you might as well hang around for a permanent freeze of yours.

Jeannine Kay

Google is doing great things, people simply prefer to use them rather than other companies. We have tried others and always return to Google, if someone is doing Very Well, why slam them, it must be envy/jealousy which is usually the case for real animosity towards anything and anyone. Carry on the good work Google!

viktor

This is my experience: Google does lousy job when it come to search result, page rank ect. I have notice that if website has a lot of AdSense advertisement on it – google will bring this website up about the rest. About three month ago, I have reported one of those sites to google, however no respond from them, website has rank 4 and always in first 10 search result despite the fact that it carries only paid advertisement and no real contents! I gave up and don’t believe one word they say! For them it is all about money and nothing else.

http://abs-gallery.com Michele

Let me ask you one thing: how many organic links do YOU have on your site?
It’s not the adsense that makes the difference, it’s the basic quality of the site.
And if it’s adsense that you think makes you fall behind – well, what is keeping you from having adsense on YOUR site?

Billy

As long as we we have free speech I don’t care.
That’s what it’s all about any way!!!!
Go GOOGLE!

http://www.avantfinancial.com.au Chris

Whether Google is a monopoly or not is a very good question. It clearly is not a monopoly as they do not have exclusive control over the “search” service. People prefer to use them and fron past studies and research people trust them.

bob

webmasters help to promote google, all this exit links, articles about google, etc. Now google launched war on them. Why? because them can now, because monopoly.

http://WebProNews Terry Travis

Google Chrome is simply the better browser…faster by far. If the others were as fast, I would be using them!

http://heptagrama.com Tedel

Maxthon is faster, actually. Opera is more comprehensive.

bob

oh, lot of troubles with google chrome browser. just try to open 5-7 windows and save some image from the any web page.

http://www.unlimitedtrust.com/ Alex

The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997.
In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed 1 billion for the first time.

Ninety-nine percent of Google’s revenue is derived from its advertising programs

http://www.mangumwhitehouse.com Will Sanders

I like it all as long as it is Google, i am a fan and even use a Chrome Book, i also use Face Book but these are two different worlds for a referent type of users in the way i see it.

http://karras-bommer.blogspot.com Karras

I vote to leave Google alone. I like everything Google and remain loyal by choice.

William

Yes, Google spent alot of time building up its brand and market share

Then – once it did that it started collecting data on a mass scale to determine habits ect.

NOW they are using that information against users in a stealth way as users think Google is just some “search engine”

Most Americans are ignorant as to whats going on because they simply do not have the time to see whats going on and Google legal team and litigators know this.

There have been over 10,000+ post online since Google Penguin and over 1000+ right to the Google message board begging Google to revert to change the result back before 1000’s of small business go under and people lose everything they worked hard to achieve organically.

Some people argue that its just other companies making the money now but that is not true – studies by SPyfu and others show that Big Business primarily AMAZON is now ranking for all products from “candles” “jewelry boxes” “valet stands” “sex toys” and 1000+ other niche markets.

Google built its business off organic search by indexing more pages than any other competitor giving all sites a fair chance to do “search engine optimization” based off Google guidelines ect. and the companies most serious in their niches made a living and there was some form of balance.

Today there is no level playing field – Google has changed its algorithm to favor Big Business and displace small business.

3 members of the board at Google are former Amazon

Google has hired over 22 lobbyists firms in Washington DC

Google admits to manual manipulation of search results by being able to delist sites, penalize sites or increase rankings for other sites.

AMAZON pays less per PPC than anyone and gets higher results. This is why their PPC platform was so different than the original GoTO.com ? Overture.com platform. it allowed Google to modify the Paid results to boost companies like Amazon for every word. On top of that Amazon get a special platform that auto creates words to direct links while other companies have to do it all themselves manually.

Goolge is no longer the Google webmasters trust.

Google is a company that went public, was taken over by a bias board of directors and has become a MONOPOLY dictating search not facilitating it.

YES – Google is a monopoly

Why all they hype now? because what Google has been doing for the last year is not what Google originally said it would do or become.

Does GOOGLE create an open environment and level the playing field? NO

It now stands behind lawyers and litigators saying “we are a company and can do what we want”

Google does to work with small companies and gives no communicate to resolve.

Matt Cutts has not worked as a functional engineer for years. HE IS A POLITICIAN for Google – a face man.

Matt Cutts gives false info making the world waste time doing all the things the top rankings companies do not do.

When Matt Cutts can show how Amazon ranks #1 for “sex toye” and amazon became an authority in that market thru content creation, better content, and all the methods he describes and all the means he is telling other companies I’ll start listening – or how Amazons subsidiary IMDB ranks #1 for “xxx”. Those are high traffic words going right to Amazon

I hate to say it, but Google needs to be regulated.
To Much Market Share
To Much Money
To Much Power

They do what they want with a legal team proven to be unstoppable.

You have Google wiping out sites like WPMU.org and LasVegasRealEstate.org and giving no way for those sites to make contact and find a resolution.

the NAR says 88% of home sales start online so a company like LasVegasRealEstate.org just got “googled”

Its funny that webmasters are staring to use the term “googled” for being wipe-out up, or having there online presence destroyed by Google.

Google is ruining the web for users, contributors and small business.

WPMU.org and LasVegasRealEstate.org are 2 valid companies that Google just wiped out among 1,000+ mentioned on the forum boards.

Matt Cutts says its because of a few bad links for WPMU.org

FACT: Amazon with all its years of questionable links from affiliate programs could not pass the link test. yet Google gives them a free pass and also makes them 1-3 for all products.

100% agree with you! It really very strange to read here ‘good’ google reviews, when it clear what G going very wrong way right now. May be this good google reviews here posted by their reviewer, because _webmasters_ who reading this site news surely not will post anything like it.

JArtist

Google is very controlling and if not a monopoly at present, will be so in the future. Yeah, they are making changes. However, their latest change being enforced by August 15th is the change to google shopping. Right now it is free for merchants to upload their products and have them listed in Google shopping. However, in order to be listed in Google shopping after the August deadline you must now pay to have your products uploaded, and it will be pay per click. This will practically kill small business who have their products listed in Google shopping which pops up on the first page, but their actual website is buried somewhere on the 5th or 6th page. Not to mention that Google adwords as they exist presently are extremely expensive due to bids and only the guys who have money can advertise. More importantly, they are launching Google “trusted shopper” which will further impose restrictions on businesses in order to comply with Google’s regulations for being listed a “trusted shopper”. This is all a way of making more money for Google and them controlling the web….right down to how retailers conduct their business.

Adnan

Well a few years ago, they made it clear that any websites getting listed in directories would be penalized in their search results.

I mean if you think at it, the actual websites on the internet is pretty much the content or the essence.

And those websites which could get traffic from Yahoo Directory or Business.com or other directories, now where to they resort to? Google Adwords.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the sites which advertise heavily on Adwords do well on the search results.

http://www.bnoticed.com Gregg

Google is not a monopoly. There were very good points in this article… Especially that NO one is forcing anyone to use Google. They have more than brand recognition… They have “the” search word. Do you ever hear people say I Yahoo’ed that or I Bing’ed it??? NO! You and everyone did a search and said I Googled it or just Google it. Google is more than just a brand… It is a culture that people accepted and now use as a verb, not just a name of a company. There are people who don’t like Google, that’s fine. There are plenty of other search sites you can use. But you’re still GOOGLE’ING it!

http://www.captaincyberzone.com Cap’n Cyberzone

Google is getting too invasive and too deceptive much like Microsoft was in the late 90’s.
As the amended old saying goes, “You can fool half of the people half of the time but when they wise-up they’ll turn on you”.
Google will be able to rope in half of the people and hold them but that’s where it stops … like it did with Microsoft.

http://www.moeheid.com Bart

Google is dominating internet. Their is no concurrent for google in search.

Al Del Vecchio

We don’t need regulation. Google is a monopoly but it will not last long if it continues it’s current path.
People have to understand that Google is an advertising company. Most of the technology they have is ripped off from other vendors and most software it makes is shitty. Andriod is a copy of iPhone basically. As soon as advertising company starts to “control” things people will flee. I am already using bing more and more. Same will happen with Facebook if it doesn’t listen to people.

Tom

To much government regulation already. Tried other and always return to Google because I like it, not because some government regulation said I must use it.
If others are better, they will displace Google, just as Google displayed previous players. It is a competitive market place, not one run by government regulations just creating more needles bureaucracy for bureaucrats to run and crete even more government jobs and rules to control our lives. We use what we use because we like it, it we don’t we just use other products – which are available.

http://www.epoolonline.com pool online

I think people do like google because it provides real quality unlike it’s inexistent competitors.

http://www.strategicrevenue.com john colascione

The majority if the web uses Google because its great. Singhal is right and they shouldn’t be penalized for being great. They should be able to do what they wish with it.

Joseph Safko

All this is a Moot point. I have all the browsers. installed on my machine and i can choose what search engine i use.Saying that Goggle is making everyone use it is crazy, I pick and choose which one i use. So the argument they use is flawed.It is peoples choice and if they want more market share then they should improve their search engines.And Leave us users alone. We make the choice on what to use.

Sammy

Google is not a monopoly that is their problem, already IT professionals started using new search engines like duckduckgo.com, ixquick.com, blekko.com general public already know about bing.com and yahoo.com.

In this situation google is desperately trying to force the small business to advertise using “black hat” tactics that is causing the backlash and outcry against them.

The desperation google is showing to force small business advertise point to imminent collapse of unlimited funding channels of black hat financial system that made mega corps like google possible.

http://www.tennisfitnesslove.com Suzanna

Google is not forcing anybody to use their search engine. I occasionally try other ones (just to see if something has changed lately) and always happily return and appreciate google… they always work on improving their algorithm so we can get good quality results.

I’ve been on the Interned since the 80s (worked at the university then) when there were not too many websites around. Now, everybody can create a website and there’s a lot of crappy information. It’s not easy for google to seed out the crap and leave just good quality content for us to view. Kudos to them!

I like Google and even more now when they are moving just a few blocks away from me, in Venice, California

bob

google reviewer?

joe fart

no

http://www.propertymix.co.za Steve Egan

The fact remains that Google crawls sites more effectively that other search engines do and so they will always have the most relevant content for any search.

http://cyberdefense-systems-logic.blogspot.com Alice-Sofia Savitsky

I think that Google offers the best search service from all offered @ the Web today. All these regulations are restrictions of the market, and the crises we are having now are exactly the consequences of communist thinking – censorship, restriction, watching – crawling into the free societies. Concerning Europe – with each day, the European Union becomes more and more embodiment of the ideology that was behind the Soviet Union’ centralized economy and Nazi Germany’s nationalized industrial complex. Google is the creation of the free world, let it stay this way!

Alice–Sofia

bob

looks like this comment was paid by google. Did you used google search at last few month’s? Lot of 404 errors at google help, local, etc – this all for best user experience? Wikipdia, mamazon, yanswers is excellent search results and ads above fold is what all peoples looking for.

http://jualbibitbuahunggul.blogspot.com teguh jaya

thanks very much,……………………………thanks very much……….

http://www.escortsindex.net Toni

I love Google and I like it as it is. If you don’t like Google, use Bing, which is a good alternative, or Yahoo. As simple as that.

http://Www.rah0804.Mihanblog.Com Raha

Veryy goodd..Saranghae

http://www.funtours.co.rs Sinisa

Just one reason force me to use Google…It’s best search engine .

http://www.neonights.net Steve Simmons

Before Google started its mass dominance on search engines I was able to really make money online but now nothing. The more they make changes, the less we make. Yes I think they have messed-up a lot of people.

http://get-business-online.com/ Gal Baras

Google lists its own collaboration site with MYOB, called gettingbusinssonline.com.au, at the top of the page, and my site, called get-business-online.com, at the very bottom of the page or not on the first page at all for the query “get business online”.

Fishy much?

http://raiderstpz.com/ Lee Davis

It’s – The – Search – That’s – The – Thing, silly. And, YES, Google IS a monopoly. Why? BECAUSE PEOPLE PREFER IT! The monopoly part just SOUNDS bad. Fact is, Google EARNED their (well-deserved) stature. And I don’t make a practice outta bein’ a fan-boy for anyone else but me. But, it’s just inescapable that if you need to find something that is only about half of an idea, the big G can sort it for you – AND FAST. Googlebot is a voracious net-beast, devouring (ok, ok, indexing) mountains of information, world wide, by whatever staggered, unholy algorithymic configuration they’re using at the moment to tidily offer it to the end-user as ther result of any type of specialized query you got. And just ONE more point. Google actually has a pre-defined query framework of language that was heartily abused for years via the “GoogleHack” technique (which, incidentally, caused them to have to alter their user-interaction access in regard to certain query attempts). Bing ain’t never gonna get it right, no matter how much money Gatesy rams down its’ gullet. They just ain’t got it. Not even has-ran…and I don’t see no “Bing Places” either.

later them will tell – we not selling positions in natural search results, but we allow you to rent them. Webmasters not have any trust to google anymore.

Lets google rank yahoo answers/amazon and wikipedia (as right now), looks we need to use other methods to get traffic. Just need not forget to disallow google bot from indexing site and soon you will see how monopoly become softer.

http://www.hoewordikrijkmethode.nl/ Hoe word ik rijk methode methode

For me is google very usufull search machine.

http://www.moezijn.nl Moe zijn

Now you can youse also Facebook to search. So its comming.

Mick

Isn’t a monopoly when you have only one choice? Seems pretty easy to type “bing.com” or “yahoo.com”.

People use Google because they are the best at what they do. End of story.